sybdump — simplify your Sybase backups

sybdump is a (open source) command-line
utility, which greatly simplifies manipulation of Sybase database
dumps by relying on our 'pipe' plugin. (Yes, we
give out the razor for free, so as to sell
more blades.)

To obtain a more versatile dump, the utility
will try to bring the database to single-user mode, sp_flushstats,
and checkpoint. It is also smart enough to notice a
cross-endian LOAD (or transfer) and tries to make the neccessary
post-LOAD step (sp_post_xpload), if suggested by the LOADing
server.

Usage examples

Once again, sybdump expects all Sybase servers it
contacts to have the 'pipe' plugin installed. The
examples below will not function without it.

Either way the resulting DBFOO.cmp is
fully compatible with Sybase's own 'compress' plugin. You
may wish to use sybdump as above, when the computer, on
which sybdump will run, is faster, than the computer running
the backup server...

bzip2 provides much better compression
compared to gzip, but takes a lot more CPU time.
It may make a difference between a dump fitting on a single tape
or a DVD and requiring a split, so it has its uses. You may also
opt for it, if you need to upload the dump over a slow connection,
in which case that connection's bandwidth, rather than the compression
throughput, is the bottleneck.

Whatever the reasons, if you have a bzip2-ed dump,
you can load it by either bunzip2-ing it first:

Unlike in the examples above, in this case, no
data is sent from a server to sybdump. Instead, the utility
tells the loading server to await for the dump on a port number
(picked by automatically), then tells the dumping server to send
the dump to that port number on the loading server's system. It may
sound complex, but the command line is simple:

sybdump -S SERVER1 -s SERVER2 DBFOO BACKUP_OF_DBFOO

While the Sybase-servers talk to each other,
sybdump keeps you entertained with their progress-report
messages...

Download:

HTML-rendered source and man-page
are available. Below are the links to actual files: